


Game On

by Johnny_Law



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-17
Updated: 2017-04-17
Packaged: 2018-10-20 02:21:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10652940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Johnny_Law/pseuds/Johnny_Law
Summary: A battle is waged. Friends become enemies as they rumble for the ultimate prize, the Mercury Gameflux 2.





	Game On

The Mercury Gameflux II didn’t want to work. Pidge scowled at the damn thing, at the damn plug that didn’t fit any of the ports that could be found on the castle, at the castle ports that looked more suitable for crystals than for the very practical tines of an earth plug. Finding a Mercury Gameflux had been like finding a little chunk of home right on display, a piece of the Holt household ready to take back to the castle with them. And it didn’t work, it didn’t fit in, it had been a whole lot of work for nothing. Hours spent up to her shins in water scooping up GAC coins from a fountain just to buy a lousy retro-gaming console that wasn't compatible with the castle.

And a cow too, they'd bought a cow, but she had lost track of it. She knew it was somewhere in the castle, probably. Someone would find it eventually. Hopefully.

She called it quits for now, stuffing her hands into the pockets of her shorts, stalking away from the console and the blank, black screen in defeat. Maybe she could engineer a solution, invent some kind of universal adapter that could allow her to run any kind of earth machine off the castle energy. Of course, the Mercury Gameflux ran on electricity, like most things from earth. Pidge wasn’t entirely sure what the energy source the castle ran on was, what exactly constituted ‘quintessence’, but she found the answer of ‘magic’ wholly unsatisfying.

Magic was taking a coin from behind a kid’s ear, pulling a rabbit out of a hat, sawing a woman in half. It was tricks meant to dazzle and entertain, not send a castle rocketing through space or power advanced alien fighters like the Voltron lions. Now Pidge wasn’t suggesting magic, or what Coran and Allura called magic at least, wasn’t altogether real. She had seen enough to know their manipulation of quintessence, and the work of Galra druids, was real and tangible. But using such a simplistic definition as ‘magic’ just put her nose out of joint.

What would Isaac Asimov think if he could see all this?

And of course, it did nothing to resolve her current problem, getting the damn game console to work. Maybe she could talk to Coran, he might have a solution, or maybe she could spitball some ideas for building an adapter with Hunk, a possible energy converter or something. Maybe she just needed to get this frustration out of her chest and into someone’s ear and talk to Shiro. Maybe she just needed to be alone with her thoughts, and learn to accept defeat.

She stalked the halls of the castle with a glare for every panel and corner that found her eye, losing minutes into hours as she rolled her frustration around in her head.

“Yo Pidge,” the call came from behind her. Lance came up with that casual stroll of his, half a smile on his face, eyes bright and hands tucked away. If ever there was a guy that couldn’t help her with any of her problems, he was it.

“Lance,” she said, maybe more gruff than she should have. He slowed to a stop in front of her, eyebrows up with a question. “Is this important or what, I have stuff to do,” she shot at him.

He scuffed the toe of his shoe. “Well gee, good morning to you too princess,” he said, “Maybe I won’t tell you.” 

The brought her ears up. “Tell me what?” she said, rubbing her chin, “What are you hiding Lance?”

The smirk he wore was as infuriating as his words were tantalizing. “Oh, well, maybe I found something to help with that game problem,” he said.

“Really, you,” she tried not to sound too smug. Okay, she didn’t try that hard.

“Well not me, really. I was talking to Coran and he told me about this old adapter he used to have. Turns out back in the day, y’know, way back when Voltron first got started, the universe wasn’t exactly running at the same speed. So they invented these converters that could let the paladins jack in whatever tech to the castle’s energy supply. Guess even the warriors of old couldn’t do without their kindle, right?” he was very smug, and very pleased with himself, and Pidge let him get away with it this time if he wasn’t lying through his teeth to set up some kind of joke.

“And does Coran have one of these converters?” Pidge asked, circling her hands to speed Lance up.

“Oh yeah, sure, he’s setting up the console right now,” he said.

Pidge was ducking past him at once, picking up to a full on sprint back the way she came, feet pounding down the wide corridor of the castle.

She burst into the room to find Coran bent over, fussing over a clutch of wires, turned awkwardly to get behind the screen. He muttered something like ‘son of a Quiznak’ as he jabbed it in. He drew out looking more tired than plugging a console into a tv screen should have made him, coif mussed up and orange moustache bristly. He huffed, clapping his hands, getting up from his knees.

“That should do the trick,” he said. He turned to beam his grin down on Pidge, fists on hips. “Though really, why you’d bother with such retrograde entertainment when we have the holodeck, I can’t understand.”

“Thanks Coran,” Pidge dropped to the ground, legs crossing, chest heaving with excitement. The controller was small even in her small hands.

“Hey, hey, hey, who said you got first dibs on my Gameflux?” Lance said as he ambled into the room.

“Your Gameflux?” Pidge snapped up at him as Coran discreetly slid from the room, “This is my Gameflux. I found it.”

“We found it, and I found more coins to pay for it,” Lance sat beside her, folding his legs, taking up the other controller. “Tell you what Pidge, I’ll play you for it. What does this game system have, Rumble Riot 2? I’ll take you down, best two out of three, and the winner owns the console.”

“You’ve just signed your own death warrant,” Pidge said, slamming down the power button on the gameflux.

A sound of crystals chiming as the Gameflux logo appeared on the black screen. Pidge drew in an excited breath. Then, the pixelated image of two tough guys in short sleeved shirts appeared, beating the heck out of each other beneath a city skyline. ‘Rumble Riot’ appeared in red, than a hard crash of lighting split the sky, and the number two flashed in black.

“Classic,” Lance said. Pidge nodded, eyes intent on the screen, the images reflected on the lens of her glasses.

The menu was in yellow letters, the art as all pixels, and the music was almost but not quite 16-bit. The whole thing was so retro it was charming. She flicked down to the VS mode.

“Choose your rumbler!” the announcer called, cartoon portraits unfurling across the screen. She tapped the stick, hunting for her favorite rumbler.

“I bet you’re a Hiro type, real meat and potatoes fighter,” Lance said with a slick condescension just as she paused over Hiro’s scowling, cheek bandaged face. “Nothing wrong with that, he’s the game mascot. Kind of boring though.”

“Ha, and I beat you like Gibson, just because she doesn’t wear pants,” she shot back at him.

“Au contraire, mon ami,” he settled on skinny Emilie, the French school girl with the black beret.

“Oh yeah, wild card pick,” Pidge rolled her eyes, “She’s just Hiro in a school girl package, you perv.”

“Emilie’s small, tough and fast, and what can I say, I like her moxie,” he picked her, the announcer calling out her name. Pidge picked Hiro, then picked random for the stage.

They were transported to a cartoon depiction of Thailand, tall grass reeds and a crowd of foreigners ogling them in the background.

“You’re going down,” Lance said with a smirk.

“Bite me,” she said.

“Round one, fight!” the announcer called, and they were at it at once. Pidge threw out a fireball as Lance hopped into the air. Their fingers fired fast as they battled it out in cartoon violence, but as the battle waged, Pidge snarled, health bar dropped fast as 

Lance back flipped and wall sprung across the stage.

“You’re cheating,” she said as she ate her first loss.

“Oh please,” Lance said, blowing a raspberry.

Her fingers mashed buttons. “Quarter forward, quarter forward, punch,” she muttered, smashing Lance’s schoolgirl back.

“Get ready for a taste of the Zatsen-Zukyo,” Lance said, and the screen turned into a blue rush of water as little Emilie bunched together her firsts, and sprung a huge fireball at Pidge.

“No, no, no,” Pidge cried as Hiro went flying back, falling into a crumpled heap on the Thai dirt.

“Tres bien!” Emilie said with a fist raised in victory, cartoon grin wide.

“Winner,” the announcer yelled.

“Two out of three remember,” Pidge said. Lance nodded, smiling like a cat.

They went at it again, and again the little French girl put big, burly Hiro into the dirt. ‘Tes bien!’ she called, and Pidge snarled.

“Three out of five?” Lance asked.

“You’re damn right,” Pidge said, switching from Hiro to the black wrestler Sojourn in his USA wrestling trunks.

“All fall before the unstoppable school girl,” Lance said as they opened their battle in a smoky, garbage strewn Detroit street, electric music piping from the speakers.

Pidge let out a frustrated little huff as she focused on putting Lance down and wiping the smug grin off his face. They moved forward, fists flying, fireballs exchanged. Lance’s health bar was dropping fast and Pidge let out a victorious snarl, Sojourn lifting Emilie up and pounding her into the dirt. Emilie popped up but didn’t move fast enough to stop Sojourn from snapping her into a bear hug, tipping her back into a pile driver. And didn’t move after that. Pidge’s brow lowered as she heard Lance tap listlessly at his controller.

“Don’t go easy on me,” she said, giving him a look. She stopped, and watched Lance. He looked at the screen, the animated sprites reflected in the wet glaze over his eyes, his smile sad as he tapped the punch button.

“I used to play this game all the time,” he said, voice thick, “With my brother and sister, my cousins. It would eat up whole weekends.” The clock on the match ran to zero, the announcer proclaiming Pidge the winner, but her victory was hollow. She looked away from Lance, her knees coming up under her chin, arms crossing her knees, the controller dangling from her hand. Melancholy came up over her in a wave, sucking her down into memories of living room battles waged over their flat screen tv. Matt laughing as their parents watched from the kitchen.

“Matt loved this game,” she said, fiddling with the joystick, “Hiro was his favorite guy. He even wrote a really dumb story about Hiro and Gibson and put it up online.”

“Hibson, really,” Lance shook his head, “I was more a Himilie guy.”

“It’s Hirolie,” she said with a snap in her voice that surprised her.

“Sure Pidge,” Lance said, wiping the corner of his eye. He started getting up. “This was fun but, I think I’m done for the day. You can have the Gameflux, I don’t really care.” Something in his voice, the lose of all his irritating perkiness and smarm, put a fluttering sadness through Pidge's chest.

“Wait,” Pidge said, turning to her side, reaching up like she would stop Lance with a hand. Lance paused at his feet. She didn't want him to go, she didn't want...she didn't want to be alone. “Maybe one more game, and, you know, its not really mine. It can be both of ours. We can share it. Mine, yours, ours, um...” Her face went hot and she didn't know why, but she couldn't look Lance in his long, sad face.

“Yeah?” she looked up and Lance’s eyebrows were raised, a soft smile cracking under his sad eyes, “That’s nice of you Pidge. Okay, one more game.” She looked to the screen, biting her lip, trying to ignore the weird and unwanted fluster in her belly.

He went back to sitting on the ground right next to her, close enough their knees touched, and picked up the controller.

“Yeah, now I’m going to fight seriously,” she said, flushing away the heat in her face and the flutter in her belly as she focused on the coming rumble. She picked the smug, sharp eyebrow portrait of Gibson. The tall, athletic and very pantsless blonde Australian gave the screen a fist bump. Pidge shot Lance a sly grin. “Gibson’s my main, Lance. Get ready to go down, mate.”

Lance shot her a cagey look. “Okay then, show me your moves.”

Lightning cracked as they found their rumblers on the wind swept plains of Mongolia, a man with a yak watching in the distance. Lance and Pidge wore matching smiles as the words sprung across the screen and the announcer called out:  
‘Round one. Fight!”


End file.
